With real estate values plummeting and foreclosed homes sitting empty, a family of bobcats apparently decided the time was right to pounce. So last week, they slipped out of the parched foothills of Lake Elsinore and into a spacious, vacant home in well-groomed Tuscany Hills. Residents of the development got their first look Aug. 27 when the feline squatters -- at least two adults and three kittens -- lolled atop a wall outside the Spanish-style house. Someone called 911, reporting mountain lions.

It's been a summer of tough breaks on a remote ranch where Barbara Clarke had hoped hundreds of old and ailing horses could live out their final days amid sagebrush prairie and juniper forests. Now, Clarke has almost run out of hay and money to buy more for the animals with tattered manes, sagging backs and yearning eyes that she had rescued. Her predicament underlines the precarious finances of animal sanctuaries that live and die on the donations of others. Some of Clarke's animals were taken from sanctuaries that could no longer afford to care for them.

Federal officials are considering killing Yellowstone National Park elk infected with a livestock disease. Government agencies have killed more than 6,000 wild bison leaving Yellowstone over the last 20 years in an effort to contain brucellosis, which causes cattle to abort. Cattle in parts of Wyoming and Montana where there have been no bison for decades are being infected, and livestock officials in both states are now targeting elk as the cause.

A 60-pound pit bull named Rocky mauled an animal control officer in Lakewood, leaving the officer with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, authorities said Wednesday. The 28-year-old officer, who was not identified, suffered flesh wounds to his arms and legs and a broken knuckle after the dog lunged at him during a routine house call, said Capt. Aaron Reyes, who heads operations for the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority in southeast Los Angeles County.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman denied a request by the Humane Society of the United States to block the government from killing protected sea lions at Bonneville Dam. Indian tribes and fishermen say the sea lions are eating threatened salmon. The killing could start by the end of this week.

Adelanto may mean "progress" in Spanish, but many say this scruffy high desert community -- founded in 1915 by the inventor of the Hotpoint Electric Iron -- is perpetually stuck in a quagmire of corruption and scandal. Recent accusations of animal cruelty against Kevin Murphy, head of the city's animal control department, have once again fueled notions of a Wild West town operating on the fringes of the law.

The head of Adelanto's animal control office has been charged with multiple counts of animal cruelty after investigators said he systematically drowned dozens of kittens over four months last year. Kevin Murphy, 36, was charged Monday with six counts of killing, maiming and abusing animals and faces up to six years in prison if he is convicted.

After months of criticism -- and three lawsuits -- about the shelters operated by the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care & Control, the agency's director appeared before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to defend her stewardship. Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke had asked director Marcia Mayeda, in December, to prepare a report on the Carson shelter, after Burke's office was inundated with complaints.

Hoping to lower the number of animals that are euthanized, Huntington Beach is considering whether to make residents spay or neuter their cats and dogs and implant microchips in them so lost pets are reunited with owners. The City Council voted 4 to 3 Monday to have staff draft an ordinance that would mirror one that Los Angeles County adopted last year to regulate most dogs in unincorporated areas.

Efforts to restore the ecosystem on Santa Cruz Island to its native state reached a milestone this week as scientists said that a two-year program to eliminate feral pigs had been a success. Although the last confirmed pig death was last year, the National Park Service and the Nature Conservancy, which owns 75% of the island, have been monitoring the results of the $5-million eradication effort since then to gauge the program's effects. They say the island's endangered species are rebounding.